'Dead Man's Cell Phone' taps into human connections

While it's clear that "Dead Man's Cell Phone" doesn't display the same masterful synthesis of themes as "The Clean House" or "In the Next Room," it's also clear playwright Sarah Ruhl was troubled by societal trends regarding technology – concerns she voiced in her very dark 2007 comedy. The play later nabbed the Helen Hayes Award for best new play.

International City Theatre's production certainly amplifies the themes Ruhl wishes to engender, but it also underscores a less theme-rich approach from that of "The Clean Room," a script that formed the basis for a superb ICT staging in fall, 2010.

While recognizing the play's more serious issues, director Richard Israel taps the broad vein of absurdism that courses through "Cell Phone," apparent in the tone of his staging and in the performances of his principal cast.

Things start out in a café that's nearly deserted save for Jean (Alina Phelan) and a man sitting alone at a table a few feet away. His constantly ringing cellphone begins to irritate Jean to the point where, once she realizes he isn't moving, she's compelled to answer it for him. And like a dutiful secretary, she takes a message.

Jean soon learns that the man (Trent Dawson) is named Gordon and that he has apparently just expired. Feeling compelled to keep Gordon's business and personal lives afloat, she hangs onto his phone. In the process, she injects herself into the lives of his family members.

As is obvious, Ruhl is concerned with a lot more than just cellphone etiquette, her play a meditation on the very connectedness of people. This gives "Cell Phone" an existential underpinning that contrasts with its generally comedic outer coloration. And, like "The Clean House," Ruhl's humor is dry and acerbic, as when a character opines "the only places left that are sacred are the church, the theater, and the toilet."

Jean's neediness is almost pathological, yet it artificially prolongs Gordon's life in an almost obsessive way. By contrast, we learn that Gordon brokers deals for human organs on the black market.

As Jean, Phelan is physically quivery and anxious, her voice fluttering with uncertainty. Yet her essaying of Jean's key personality traits – emotional neediness and an intense desire to comfort others – amounts to overplaying. To this Phelan adds a physical trait: Her Jean is knock-kneed, her feet turning inward.

It would be nice if the romantic attachment that forms between Jean and Dwight moved from latent to a pleasant surprise, but Phelan and Dawson fairly telegraph the obvious, and their falling-in-love scene is overloaded with trite statements.

In a sweater vest and tennis shoes, the bespectacled Dawson already looks boyish and bookish; in this scene, he seems even more like an eager teen rather than a shy, confirmed bachelor.

The actor fares better as glib, worldly, full of himself Gordon, a personality we discover in Act Two, when Gordon looks back upon "the day I died." Dawson's affected speech patterns, nasal delivery and oily presence are a good start, but the actor falls short of evoking Gordon's narcissism.

While in that temporary metaphysical limbo late in Act Two, Jean is able to do something she couldn't previously do: converse directly with Gordon. Not only is he not the kind of person who deserves to have his memory perpetuated by well-meaning people like Jean; his conduct and outlook are morally bankrupt.

T'Kaye's upper crust Harriet Gottlieb, Gordon and Dwight's mother, is ossified within her cultured mannerisms and way of dealing with the world. We're constantly told she favored Gordon over Dwight, yet we later hear from Gordon that mom wasn't very nurturing of him, either.

Diol and Roberts essay the play's three most underwritten roles, more sketches than full-fledged characters. As the neglected wife, who gets tipsy when she meets Jean for drinks, Diol is given perfunctory, self-evident lines like "Cellphones are constantly ringing all over the world." To her credit, she injects pleasing levels of eccentricity into a fairly stock character.

As the dead man's mistress, another stereotype, redhead Roberts is a sexually forceful, enigmatic lady in red – then for Act Two, Roberts unveils a radically different façade as "The Stranger." A shady black-market business contact of Gordon's, she's got a heavy Russian accent, ruthless manner and stereotypical Cold War-era spy persona.

Dave Mickey's sound design is a crucial element, notably his swirling, psychedelic effect for the Rodgers & Hammerstein song "You'll Never Walk Alone." J Martyn Bookwalter's scenic design is defined by monochromatic photos of busy city life, arranged on vertical panels. The fragmented quality this suggests ideally represents the cellphone-driven lives of the digital age.